Tip of the week ON THE WILD SIDE

BUILD your own moth trap with a bucket or box full of old cardboard egg cartons and a lamp. Moths are drawn to the light and settle on the comfortable cardboard.

We have two species of elephant hawk-moth, the large and small. Both are bright pink and greenish-gold and look like someone went wild with a highlighter pen.

The large is the one we are going to be talking about as the small is just that, but with slightly different markings.

The large elephant hawkmoth is one of the most common hawk-moths in the UK. They are particularly active at this time of year, flying at dusk looking for flowers.

Ever wondered why there are some flowers that smell better at night? Well, that’s to attract moths. Nightscented and tube-shaped flowers such as honeysuckle are a favourite of hawk-moths.

They hover in front of plants and unfurl their long tongue into the flower like a straw. Their flight was said to resemble a hawk’s flight, hence the name. How do they find flowers in the dark? They were one of the first creatures ever to be recorded as having colour vision in the dark.

They live around purple-pink flowers, among which their colours allow them to blend in incredibly well. They lay their eggs on flowers such as rosebay willowherb and fuchsia. The first part of their name comes from their caterpillars – grey-brown, three-inch monsters as thick as your thumb, that look like an elephant’s trunk.

They have a long “spike” at the end of their tail, with neck spots that look like eyes. When threatened they “inflate” their necks to look like snakes. Now is the best time to see hawk-moth caterpillars cruising in he day. They should be fat, full of food and ready to pupate. They come down from their plant homes to burrow into fallen leaves, usually at the foot of plants, and turn into big speckled pupae.

They stay this way until next May, when they will emerge as beautiful, bright pink moths ready to start the cycle again.